Obscured by clouds

I've noticed that the days are shortening.  Arrival at Toddington on a Saturday morning is technically before dawn at the moment, though the sky is still blessed with a fair amount of pre dawn light.  It won't be long though before much of the loco preparation will be being done in the dark.  I must remember to stock up on batteries for my Bardic and various torches.  

I was down to clean 2807 on Saturday morning, but even though she had been working trains all through the week, she was pretty much sparkling clean.  Giving the outside of the smoke box a good going over with a 50/50 mix of diesel & motion oil always makes a loco look smarter, so I did that to start off with before breaking out the Brasso and giving the safety valve cover some therapy. It's always best to get the things that will get hot done before they become too hot.

Superbly cleaned smoke box

Shortly after the above photo was taken, Chris, the fireman for the day grabbed a generous handful of the blower to pep his fire up a bit.  This resulted in a spray of water being briefly emitted from the chimney and making a bit of a mess.  When I brought the matter to his attention, Chris said "It's your fault for having cleaned the smoke box prematurely".  Hitherto I hadn't realised that it was possible to be too quick to clean the smoke box.  I'm now older, but probably no wiser. 

The other engine out on Saturday was Foremarke Hall.  

Matt gets to work on Foremarke Hall's safety valve bonnet

Matt had no such issues with his fireman, though I guess Ade would have stopped his pocket money if he had had the temerity to bring such a transgression to his attention.

One or two drivers turn out to be occasionally rather too liberal with the oil and leave small puddles of the stuff over the running plate etc, so I leave cleaning the running plate until after the driver has finished oiling round.  Ian was more careful than most, but I still wound him up about the few drops he did spill.

"Hurry up and take the photo, it's nearly full"

2807 setting off from the shed

Arty farty shot of Foremarke Hall's reflection in a puddle

2807 on the way to the ash pit

Chris has recently passed out as a fireman and had been taught to fire by Ade, who is now my firing instructor.  The opportunity to watch Chris fire and see exactly how it should be done proved to be too alluring and I joined the crew of 2807 for the first round trip.

Ian at the regulator

Trench digging at Cheltenham

I noted that the construction of platform 2 at Cheltenham Race Course station is progressing

Platform 2 taking shape.

Chris managed to make the whole firing thing look easy.... well mostly:

That will teach him for saying I had cleaned the smoke box prematurely

He did assure me later that 2807 never blew off again all day.

Ian and Mark have spotted something interesting at Bishops Cleeve

Entering Greet tunnel....

... and emerging from the other end.

 We arrived at Winchcombe to find that Dave Clark and some of his band of volunteers in the carriage and wagon dept had stopped for a tea break which had been cunningly timed to coincide with the arrival of the trains:

Our trains are so punctual you can set your kettle by them

Foremarke Hall arrives

Chris bungs a few more shovels full of coal in the firebox before we carry on back to Toddington...

... and then takes a breather

Arriving back at Toddington, we find that the Permanent Way gang are out in force replacing a few life-expired sleepers:

Permanent way gang at work

For the rest of the day, my plan was to assist the gallant team of people who were ripping out some of the track in the David Page shed.  We have money set aside to put in a proper concrete floor, but we need to remove the old track before the concrete can be laid.  The plan was to do it a quarter of the shed at a time.  One of the tracks in the first quarter of the shed had been lifted out during the week, all that remained was to extract the other one:

Dan, Matt, Cliff & Ben trying to work out why the rail won't budge

 At one point Cliff mentioned that "the blog has improved no end lately".  This was praise from an unexpected quarter (to be fair, praise from any quarter is unexpected).  My mind raced trying to think of what I might have done differently recently.  Cliff went on to say, "Yes, it's been far better because I've not been in it".  Well you're back in it now Cliff.

It took a lot of work to shift it that far

Ben drags the rail away

The stack of sleepers on the left was from earlier in the week. Our pile has just started on the right

During a tea break a bit later, I noticed that the PW gang were still hard at work on the running line.  They seemed to make it all look so easy.

Andrew hits something, the other two supervise

Our poor attempts to shift just a single track panel out of the shed would have no doubt caused the PW gang no end of amusement had they seen us. Mercifully, although we were no more than 100 yards away from them, we were safely out of sight.

Shifting track was all rather too much like hard work, so when the opportunity to skive off and put a warming fire into 5542 presented itself, I jumped at the chance. 

5542 in need of warming up

Later on, mechanical assistance was brought to bear in shifting the sleepers

It was nice to see Ian back with us again after a recent injury

Ben stacking the last of the concrete sleepers

Speaking of Ben, he hit the ripe old age of 27 on Sunday.  Rather than celebrate in a flamboyant fashion, Ben settled for an understated 83N reporting code and a "The Birthday Express" headboard on 2807.  I had been hoping that they might have baked a birthday cake in the smoke box or something, but if they did, no photos have emerged.

Ben on the birthday express, photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

And finally, I have received the total raised by the sponsored coast to coast walk in aid of the Broadway extension.  Thank you very much indeed to all who sponsored me, you have raised a grand total of £676.41.  It turns out that the sleepers for Broadway appeal has already managed to generate enough funds to cover the cost of the track and we have now launched a share issue "Bridges to Broadway" to cover the half a million pounds required to sort the bridges out (described in the latest issue of the Cornishman, but not yet anywhere that I could spot on the main website).  What is still short of obvious fund raising activity is the quarter of a million pounds required for the station buildings at Broadway, so I have agreed for the sponsor money to be used to help with that.  After all, having a station to arrive at is as much a part of the overall Broadway extension project as fixing the bridges or laying the track.  In the event that any sponsors have a problem with this slight change in use of the money raised, then please contact me through this blog for a refund.  Once again, thank you to all that supported me one way or another.  I'll sign off with my favourite view from the walk, a 180 degree panorama from the top of Red Pike (Buttermere) at the start of the second day's walking.

L-R Irish Sea, Loweswater (small bit visible), Crummock Water & Buttermere with Bleaberry Tarn bottom right

Riding the Gravy Train.

It's probably no secret that the cushiest cleaning turn to get is the evening dining train.  The deal is that you pitch up towards the end of the normal day's timetable, help dispose of train 1 (empty the smokebox and ashpan) and then get to ride out on it for a couple of trips between Winchcombe and Cheltenham, sedately hauling the dining train into the sunset. Not only that, but you get a free meal too. There's supposed to be no such thing as a 'free lunch', but I'm struggling to spot the catch here.  Before that though, I had a little time to wander around and record the activities of the steam loco dept at Toddington:

I rather liked the symbolism of the ex-GWR prairie reflected in the tender of the Stanier designed 8F.  Stanier of course served for many years on the GWR, finally becoming the works manager at Swindon before being poached by the LMS.

Neil got in on the act too

At 50p per shovel full.....

Progress has been made on 4270, I noticed that some of the boiler cladding now has a top coat of paint applied:

4270's boiler cladding

Work was taking place on 35006 as well:

Re-fitting the driver's side motion

A good day's work

I had been informed in advance that Ian had been revisiting some of the painting.  I presume that this is his handiwork on 35006's trailing truck:

Finished to a high gloss

Meanwhile, Mike got on with the task of inspecting all the department's ladders.  Even heritage railways don't escape from the requirements of the HSE:

Mike taking steps

One of our eagle-eyed drivers had noticed that there was a small crack in the frames of 2807.  It was tiny and well concealed under the running plate, I'm amazed that he spotted it.  The fix was to remove the running plate, grind out the crack and rebuild it with weld:

Matthew assists in removing the section of running plate

 One of the rivets holding down the running plate that needed removing was half buried under the boiler cladding.  Apparently the removal of enough cladding to provide adequate access to unbolt the rivet from below and extract the head was a major undertaking.  Plan B was to just remove the rivet head with an angle grinder.

David using 'angle grinder diplomacy' to extract the half hidden rivet

The offending crack revealed

David grinds out the crack

 David seems to be quite keen on using that angle grinder.  I wonder if he is related to the motorist's superhero, Angle Grinder Man?

Part way through grinding out the crack

 I missed the welding part (yes I know, you just can't get the staff), but here is the application of the finishing touches of paint on the replaced rivet heads.

Job's a good 'un

Back to the plot, the 8F would soon be returning from her turn as  train 1, in readiness to be prepared for the evening dining train.  There was a slight issue in that the railway's fire service department was making use of the hose by the ash pit to refill one of the fire trucks:

Re-filling the fire truck

We borrowed the hose back in time to damp down the ash in the ash pan and get her ready for service in time:

Jeff replenishes the tender with coal

Arrival at Winchcombe revealed the rather tastefully finished Monster wagon mentioned in last week's blog.  I grabbed a photo whilst we sat waiting to extract the dining train from its siding:

Our Monster

The crew for the evening was Tina on the shovel and the increasingly inaccurately named Mark Young on the regulator.  Mark has just celebrated one of those landmark birthdays that involves a zero... preceded by a largish number.  It only took a little mild ribbing about this to provoke him into highlighting the fact that he was the youngest person on the footplate by a considerable margin.   

Also joining us on the footplate was traveling signal man Bill Tyndall who took great delight in letting me know that in a recent blog post I had erroneously identified Cheltenham signal box as the one at Toddington in a photo that Ben had provided.  Yet another sign of slip shod editorial standards. If I get any worse I'll be relegated to editing one of the tabloid newspapers.  At least I know how to use a spelling checker, so I won't end up on the Guardian.  No spilling misteaks hear!

Being on the footplate after dark is a rather strange experience.  I have to say it is one I rather enjoy even though it presents its own difficulties. Hurtling into the dark (as much as one can hurtle at 25 MPH) is slightly disconcerting at first, but after a while of not actually hitting anything becomes less daunting. It's a bit like doing the whole journey inside Greet tunnel. Peering into the firebox temporarily destroys your night vision.  I experimented with the old trick of looking into the firebox using one eye and looking out for signals with the other, it wasn't perfect, but it was an improvement on not doing so.  Knowing where I was on the line was at times a challenge and I found myself paying attention to the curves in the track to identify when we had got to certain points along the line.

Tina catches the last of the evening sun on the footplate

I'll catch some grief for uploading this photo as one or two of Tina's hairs have blown out of place, but the warm evening light and the smile more than compensate. A cricket box now forms an indispensable part of my footplate attire.
 
Our evening meal was delivered to the footplate by none other than Andrew Goodman, the owner of the dining train.  Andrew was responsible for the repatriation of the two LNER A4 locomotives last year for the great gathering of all six surviving A4's at the NRM at York.  The repatriation process was shown on the Monster Moves programme on channel 5 last week.

The two A4's (plus Union of South Africa) at Shildon last year

Mark tucks into his dinner

There was just enough light to see when the tender was full, no wet boots today

All done, time to put the 8F to bed

About to be fired?

My plans for the weekend of the 7th & 8th of September have been deferred until later in the year, so with an unanticipated free weekend, I decided to use the time wisely and I belatedly volunteered for a cleaning vacancy on the 7th of September using our online rostering website.  On Friday evening I received an email saying that my offer had been accepted.  This is the email that I received:

That might be slightly difficult to read, but if you look carefully, I have not been rostered to be the cleaner, but to be the loco.  This has caused some amusement amongst the other volunteers in the steam loco dept who are quite keen to see me try to suck on the vacuum pipe hard enough to release the brakes on seven coaches and then pull them to Cheltenham and back at line speed.  I presume that I would also be expected to give the rostered driver & fireman a piggy-back and be fed coal and water as I go.  Several firemen have said that they will try to get the roster changed so that they become the fireman for the day and get the job of feeding me the coal.... one way or another. That's nearly a fortnight away, hopefully our apparent shortage of steam locomotives that hitherto I was oblivious of will have been remedied by then. 

Anyway, on to Saturday.  Once more I found myself bright and early at Toddington for the day.  This was rather different though, as it was my first official firing lesson with Ade who has drawn the short straw and ended up as my instructor.  Although Ade would be on the footplate with me all day, I would end up with two drivers doing a split shift, Ian in the morning & Neil in the afternoon.  It seems that neither could face the prospect of a full day of me firing for them.  5542 is noted for being very easy to get to produce steam, too easy in fact, many firemen over-cook it and find themselves blowing off.  I was determined to try to not make the same mistake and was quite pleased with myself that by departure time for the first trip down to Cheltenham I had a decent fire, the pressure gauge was pretty much on the mark, I still had a bit of water space left in the glass, yet the safety valves still hadn't been put to the test. I baled in a few more shovels full of coal just for good measure in the last couple of minutes before we were off, the guard blew his whistle, waved his flag and off we went.  Looking back now, those last few shovels full of coal were my undoing.  In no time at all we were out of water space, 5542 was making steam like there was no tomorrow and much of it was roaring out of the safety valves... all the way to Winchcombe. Being held up at the outer home signal for a while didn't help matters much either. I'm informed that it caused some amusement for the crew of 8274 which we crossed when we got to Winchcombe. Later that evening, Ian Chilton contacted me via a well known social media website and asked "how much bloody coal did you put on this morning?".  So it appears that it wasn't just the crew of 8274 who had noticed.  Ian went on to say "poor Clive missed the train because he couldn't see it :-~". 

Chris pours the teas.  He would be amused later, on 8274 at Winchcombe

One of my earliest blog posts involved the fitting of this light pole at Toddington.  It still has no lights, but has acquired this impressive fungus instead. Hopefully it glows in the dark.

Dan's handiwork on the wood store, note the nice new and for the time being white panels

8274 setting off to pick up her stock for the first train of the day

Emptying out the ash pan on 5542 before setting off

There are no photos of what took place during the day, I was too busy doing other things.  Although improvements on the first time, I still managed to over do the firing when leaving Toddington on the subsequent trips. Afterwards Ade gave me a lengthy list of things that I should be working on in order to improve.

Filling up 5542 at the end of the day. Ade holds the pipe, Neil operates the water tap

One thing that did stick in my mind from the day was that whilst standing in the platform at Cheltenham, a passenger said "That doesn't look very authentic" as I fished my phone out of my pocket to check the time.  I assured him that it was a much sought after genuine Collett 1930's GWR iPhone, examples of which commanded astronomical prices on the rare occasions that they appeared in railwayana auctions.  I'm not convinced that he believed me, but he laughed anyway. 

Somehow I had been rostered not only for fireman training on Saturday, but also as a cleaner on the Sunday, so it was back to Toddington again on Sunday morning.  The same two locos were out again, and I had 5542 to clean.  There isn't that much to do as far as cleaning 5542 is concerned, so I wound up cleaning up the grate that I had left behind from the day before and lighting her up again.  It was interesting to compare the light thin fire of the night before with the small amount of ash scattered about on the grate in the morning.

We also had Matthew, a new cleaner start on Sunday.  Keen as mustard!  I noticed from my vantage point on the top of 5542 that whilst every body else was stood about chatting, he was still cracking on with cleaning 8274.

Matthew hard at work on the tender of 8274

After spending a bit of time in the morning showing Matthew the ropes, introducing him to the delights of breaking up wooden pallets for the wood store etc, I went out for a couple of trips out on 5542 in the company of Derek (ex Gloucester Horton Rd fireman) and Neil again from yesterday.  Obviously Neil is a glutton for punishment.  Derek's first comment when I arrived on the footplate was.  "I'm jolly disappointed in you, unless you've got it well hidden, you've left your camera behind".  He needn't have worried I did have it, it was just cunningly concealed:

Derek is a firm believer in well ventilated footplate attire

Derek on the shovel

Whilst 5542 comes complete with a seat for the fireman, no such luxury is provided for the driver.  If the driver wants to take the weight off of his feet, he needs to perch himself somewhere above the reverser:

Neil perching above the reverser

I spotted a passenger wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt at one point which prompted Neil to spend much of the rest of the day singing Pink Floyd songs as we trundled along.  Not being able to sing a note myself I refrained from joining in, even though I knew all the words.

5542, not having a tender can fit on the platform at Toddington as well as the coaches. This meant that much of the time we were waiting there Derek was engaged in chatting to passengers and inviting them up onto the footplate. He even managed to find a chap celebrating his 85th birthday on the railway who had worked as a young conscript on the Longmoor Military Railway in 1946 & 1947 before embarking on a  career with the LMS and then BR. At various times I tried engaging some of the passengers in conversation.  I asked several young children if they were intending to come along to the Thomas weekend in September, getting varied responses.  For some children and parents, this came as news and they were keen to come back, though one little chap wanted to know why the engine that I was on wasn't wearing a face.  Oops!  Well this one was of course just an ordinary steam loco, it's only special steam locos on the Isle of Sodor that have faces and they would be the ones to visit us in September.  

You often find that parents, usually the dads are keen to get their offspring onto the footplate for a minute or two when ever possible in stations.  An elaborate charade is sometimes played out where a disinterested or occasionally even frightened child is offered up as an excuse for dad to bring the child up onto the footplate. Everybody knows that it's really dad that wants to be there and not the child, but the crew will usually play along and try to encourage the child before finally saying something like "Well perhaps dad would like to come up instead then?".  On other occasions the child concerned needs no second bidding.  In the hurried run around at Cheltenham, one such keen little lad arrived on the footplate with his dad.  Not only did he want to know what everything did, but he also wanted to put some coal onto the fire.  At that point in time, the last thing the fire needed was any more coal, but I bunged a lump of coal or two onto the shovel and let him tip it into the firebox anyway.  For me it was another of those tables have turned moments similar to the milkman story of a couple of weeks ago.  About ten or so years ago I was driving to Cornwall on holiday.  My wife, mother-in-law and eldest daughter had gone ahead in one car, my youngest daughter, Emily and myself plus more luggage than you could shake a stick at were in another car.  Well Cornwall is a long way to go, so you need to break the  journey somewhere and I chose to detour away from the usual route along the A30 and take a break on the South Devon Railway.  After doing the child friendly things at Buckfastleigh, Emily started to get to be rather bored with dull old steam trains.  The fireman on small prairie 5526 noticed that Emily wasn't looking best pleased at hanging around on the platform and invited her up onto the footplate.  "I've got to make the train ready to go in a bit, I need to get that needle up by the red line" he said pointing to the pressure gauge.  "How do you think we do that?"  Emily didn't know, but looked interested.  "Well I've got to take some of that coal in the bunker there and shovel it onto the fire.  Would you like to have a go at doing that for me?".  All of a sudden, steam locomotives became very interesting as far as Emily was concerned, she perked up considerably and talked about if for days afterwards. Needless to say it made my day rather more enjoyable as well.

Emily building up the fire on 5526

Family groups make up a fair proportion of our visitors.  Having long enough platforms to accommodate carriages and locomotive as well as gaps long enough in the timetable to allow visits to the footplate is important to our visitors and will keep them coming back, just like I still visit the SDR regularly even though it's a fair trek from home for me.  It may seem a bit strange that we are going to the trouble of building such long platforms at Broadway and a second lengthy platform at Cheltenham, but little things like that really do make a world of difference to the visitors experience.

Unrelated to the above story, but still involving the SDR, is the fact that they have a GWR Monster van, from 1918 which was built for moving theatrical scenery around the country.  I believe that just one other survives, and it is currently being restored alongside the carriage and wagon department at Winchcombe.  I have noted as I've passed on the train that it's restoration is coming along nicely.  The one on the SDR lives alongside the platform at Totnes station and makes an interesting and popular backdrop for photos:

My little monster and the SDR's monster

I have no idea who owns the one we have on the railway, or what the plans are for it when it is finished and I'm probably speaking out of turn, but I'd like to think that when not in use it could be found a home alongside a platform at  one of our stations such as Winchcombe where it too can form the backdrop to treasured family photographs.

Finally, recent social media debates have raged about what can be cooked on a steam loco. Last year during the Santa specials, we tried mince pies on the back head and sausage and bacon on the shovel.  Ben informed me on Saturday that 10 miles wrapped in tin foil in the smoke box is not nearly enough to bake potatoes.  He needed to take them over to the Flag and Whistle to get Val to finish them off in a micro wave.  If anybody out there can come up with a sensible idea for something to be cooked in a smoke box, I might just give it a whirl sometime.  The results promise to be amusing though unlikely to be edible.